Now, dear friends, before coming to the message, I want first to raise with you this question as to the real fruitfulness of a time together like this.
We want every one of these meetings to be a success. I am sure you want the meetings to be a success. But what do we, each one, think of as a success? What would you say was the real success of our having come together this afternoon?
Perhaps you have not thought of it like that. Well now, this is the time in which to adjust our minds to this matter, and to ask ourselves individually: What am I expecting? What am I looking for? What am I wanting? Why have I come here?
You feel that it is very necessary to focus down on questions like these, and really concentrate on some issue, and definitely say to ourselves, “Now, such and such, for me, would make the meeting a success.” That is only a manner of approaching things.
You will understand what I mean when I say that the only real justification for our coming into any meeting at all of the Lord’s people is that the Lord should speak to us as though we were the only person in the world; that is, that we should go away truly able to say, “The Lord has spoken to me.”
I think we could hope for nothing better, desire nothing greater or more than that. If that should be the case, then it would be a success, would it not?
But when we have said that, we have got to get still closer to the matter. We must forget the meeting. We must forget the other people who are here, or who are not here. We must forget the place. We must forget the speaker.
We must try to get through the way in which he speaks, and through the handling of the Word of God on his part, to get right through. All the time, have our hearts and minds poised in this way: “Is the Lord saying anything to me? What is the Lord saying to me at this time? Is the Lord saying something to me, or is He trying to say something?”
Now, that is absolutely essential for the spiritual success of any meeting: that we must seek to be alone with the Lord, all the time watching and listening intently for anything that the Lord may be seeking to say to us.
Will you try to make that adjustment and get that kind of attitude? If so, if the Lord really has something to say, He will find that a good opportunity for saying it.
Brother Phil spoke about a theme for the conference. I believe the Lord has given me something which may run through the later meetings after this afternoon. I had thought that perhaps we would have made a start with it this afternoon, but on the way here, and since being here, I have had a very real sense that that is not so for the moment. There is something else to come before that which the Lord would have me say.
Not knowing anything about that, of course, you will not be surprised—if you are, pleasantly surprised—to know that I am turning you to John 17. I think it would be good for us to read that prayer again, carefully.
There is only one thing in it that is in my heart to think about, but we need the whole prayer in order to get to that one thing. So we will read.
You will notice that the first words of the chapter, as it were, require the last words of the chapter before:
“These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
— John 16:33
“These things spake Jesus; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, Father, the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that the Son may glorify Thee:
even as Thou gavest Him authority over all flesh, that whatsoever Thou hast given Him, to them He should give eternal life.
And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
I glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do.
And now, Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine Own Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world: Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me; and they have kept Thy word.
Now they know that all things whatsoever Thou hast given Me are from Thee:
for the words which Thou gavest Me I have given unto them; and they received them, and knew of a truth that I came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst send Me.
I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for those whom Thou hast given Me; for they are Thine:
and all things that are Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine: and I am glorified in them.
And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are.
While I was with them, I kept them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me; and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I come to Thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy made full in themselves.
I have given them Thy word; and the world hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
I pray not that Thou shouldest take them from the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth.
As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the world.
And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that believe on Me through their word;
that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us: that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.
And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as We are one;
I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me.
Father, that which Thou hast given Me, I will that, where I am, they also may be with Me; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world.
O righteous Father, the world knew Thee not, but I knew Thee; and these knew that Thou didst send Me;
and I made known unto them Thy name, and will make it known; that the love wherewith Thou lovedst Me may be in them, and I in them.”
— John 17:1-26
Now I want you just to pass your eye over that prayer. Verse 1: “Father.” Verse 11: “Holy Father.” Verse 21: “As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee.” Verse 24: “Father.” Verse 25: “O righteous Father.”
Go back to verse 6: “I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me.” Verse 26: “I made known unto them Thy name.” “I manifested Thy name. I made known Thy name.”
Quite evidently, from this chapter and from a great mass of this whole Gospel, the name which He manifested and made known was the name Father.
It may not impress us as it would have done those of His own time, for with the Lord Jesus there came in a revelation of God which was nothing less than revolutionary—revolutionary.
You go back to the Old Testament and look at the manifestation of God in the names and titles which are given to Him. There are many. They are wonderful; they are very great, very glorious—but usually very remote. They put God in a frightful, hallowed, and awful isolation.
There He is, the One Who is unapproachable in Himself, and Whose presence always creates fear—something like terror. If there was anything approximating to the coming near of God, even in those strange forms of manifestation called theophanies, in the first place those visited thought it was a man, and then afterward said, “The Lord.”
Even there, the people cried out in fear. The Lord had said even to Moses, “Thou canst not see My face; for man shall not see Me and live.” And when Jacob wrestled with a man, and subsequently that man departed, Jacob cried, “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.”
To him, that was a wonderful thing, because he had not met the unveiled Deity. The veiled God had come in man-form. But even so, Jacob recognized that it was the Lord, and the wonderful thing was that his life remained in him. That was the Old Testament conception of God.
When the Lord Jesus came into this world, He brought an altogether revolutionary revelation of God. The one word on His lips, more than any other word, was “Father”: “My Father,” “the Father,” “our Father,” “Father.”
This heart of John’s Gospel, which those who have organized it have marked off as the seventeenth chapter, is, as you will see, the culmination, the summation, of all that has come before: the life of the Lord Jesus, the manifestation of the Son of God, with all His works and words.
Here the end has come. Notice how it goes on immediately: “When Jesus had spoken these words, He went forth with His disciples over the brook Kidron, where was a garden.” The final scenes of His earthly life were enacted. The cross followed.
This is the gathering up of everything. It is Jesus gathering it all up: the purpose for which He came into this world, the meaning of all His teaching and all His works, the meaning of His having been here in this world. He is putting it into one word: Father.
He is saying, about His life, His work, His words—His everything up to this last hour—“What I came for, I have done. I came to manifest Thy name.”
Note the way in which He puts it. He did not come to tell them that God is a Father—to give them a doctrine, a truth, a teaching about the fatherhood of God as a theme, as a subject. He did not say that. He said, “I manifested.”
If you like, for our purpose, you could use the word demonstrated. “I demonstrated.” There is all the difference, you know, between a lecturer and a demonstrator; between a preacher and one who demonstrates.
To manifest is something very practical. It is more than words, more than teaching. It is showing in a living way the thing that you are desiring others to grasp and understand.
And so this matter of God the Father was manifested in a Person. The Person Himself was the manifestation. When you look at Him, when you listen to Him, when you watch Him doing what He was doing everywhere, there is one deduction that you can draw—I should draw, I must draw: That is what God is like. That is just what God is like.
Whether it be with the little children, His hands in blessing upon them and drawing them to Himself; or any of the many things that He did in healing, comforting, restoring; or any of the wonderful things that He said in the parable of the prodigal son or the lost sheep—the conclusion is not merely, “That is a pretty story. That is very interesting. That conveys some wonderful truth and teaching.” Oh, no. The conclusion is: That is what God is like.
It is all an expression of God as Father. He Himself is the manifestation of the Father.
Now open that up. Go right back to the beginning of history as the Bible gives it to us. This conception is inherent in the very beginning.
What was the conception with which the Bible opened? When God had completed His creative activities and got His man and the man’s wife—that was the end, the crown—what was it all unto? A family. A family.
The family conception was right there in the very beginning. In God’s mind, it was to be a family of His own children. Not merely men and women, but to God it was a family for Himself. He wanted a family—children after His own image and likeness, like Himself. His heart was set upon this.
It is there right at the beginning: “Be fruitful, and multiply.” Behind it is God, and it is God in the spirit and intent of fatherhood—to have a family.
Do you notice that in the second phase of the Bible, what we call the patriarchs, it is family which is the dominant characteristic? The patriarchs. It is a big word, patriarch, as you know, but you know what it is: the head of a family, that is all.
Perhaps you have not thought of that when you have thought of Noah and Abraham and all these people and called them by this high-sounding name, the patriarchs. No, just the heads of families, that is all.
But right through that long and very rich phase of the development of history in the Bible, deeply embedded is this idea of the family. In the patriarchal family, it was not only the father who was the head of the household; the eldest son was the priest of the family, in union with the father.
It was fathers and sons which was the divine idea—father and son. If you like to make it singular, you can, because you are looking right ahead to John 17: Father and Son lying there right at the heart of the patriarchal family.
Then you move further in Bible history and come to what we call that section of the Old Testament which has to do with the kings—the monarchy. Have you been impressed with this? When that phase reaches its highest point, its peak, in David and Solomon, the very conception and idea of monarchy, government, reign, and kingdom life is Father and Son.
David and Solomon: that was the peak of the monarchy. If you look both into the Old Testament account and into the New Testament references to it, you will find that those words spoken by the Lord to David about his son Solomon—“He shall be to Me a son, and I will be to him a Father”—are taken up in the Book of Acts and applied to the Lord Jesus.
So God was looking through David and through Solomon, not just at them, but through them to His own eternal thought of the family. Here it is the family reigning, governing: fatherhood and sonship in government and supreme dominion.
You come to the next and final section of the Old Testament: the prophets. What is this cry of the prophets? In this section, it is a cry, a sob, a groan, an agony, a tragedy. That is the spirit of the prophets.
They are burdened. You know that word is used about their message: “The burden of the word of the Lord.” They were burdened men, men with a cry, men with a heartache, men who were expressing a grief.
Listen to Isaiah 53. What is it all about? God has not His family. The family has been broken up and broken down. The family is scattered and disintegrated. It is away from God and away from God’s house.
God is deprived of that thing for which, first of all, He created, and then inculcated into the whole of His dealings with men—His love, His purpose. God is there, and the prophets seem to be in a state of disappointment, in a state of sorrow.
Listen to Hosea, for instance. There is a cry, deep anguish in that prophet’s heart, and it all focuses upon this family conception.
Well, that is enough. It has covered a lot of history, has it not? There is a lot more in it than that. You can see that it could carry us on for a week. But that is enough to show what was in God’s heart.
That is enough to show what was in God’s heart—what His heart has been set upon, what He had hidden, in a way, as we have traced history, in His dealings with men and in His constitution of things: a hidden desire and purpose, the heart of God.
Then God’s Son comes—the Son.
Now, I am not going to tell you at this point and do all the work for you. You do a little work on this, and you will be greatly helped as well as greatly impressed. Just go through your New Testament and tabulate the number of times Father and Son occur—Father and Son, that is, as to God and the Lord Jesus.
Then, when you have done that, go the third step and tabulate the number of times that the Lord’s people are referred to as His children, His sons, as in a family relationship to Himself—begotten of God, born of God, and so on. It is full, is it not? It is rich. We have only mentioned it, but a great deal has yet to come back to us and break upon us.
Now we have said that the Son of God came from the Father. So He said, “I came forth from the Father.” And why?
To take up all that history—one thing. To take up all history from creation, through the patriarchs, through the monarchy, through the prophets—and gather into Himself the realization of this thing for His Father, to satisfy His Father.
Dear friends, if you want to know what the Lord Jesus meant, and what it means where we are concerned, when He says, “I am come to do Thy will”—Thy will, Thy will—that great will of God could be spelt with a capital W. What was it? This that we are talking about.
The will of God is the family of God, in which He is truly Father God; His Son is truly the Son, the eldest Son, the Firstborn among many brethren. That is the will of God.
You want to know the will of God. You ask to know what the Lord’s will is. Well, of course, you may apply that to all sorts of things, but you must remember that the will of God is very comprehensive and specific. The will of God is just this that we are talking about.
He came for this. He came not only to speak of the Father, but to manifest the Father, so that He could say:
“He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”
— John 14:9
There is no further need for you to say, “Show us the Father.” No further need for anybody to say, “Show us the Father.” “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.” “I manifested Thy name.”
As we have seen in this chapter, again and again: “Father,” “Holy Father,” “O righteous Father.” The Lord Jesus has come expressly to give, in His own Person, the revelation of God. He has come to redeem unto God His family.
There are wonderful words in the early part of the letter to the Hebrews: “He is not ashamed to call them brethren,” saying, “Behold, I and the children whom God hath given Me.” “Holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling.”
That is the fruit of His redeeming activity. Dear friends, it is a good thing to be redeemed. It is a good thing to have redemption in the sense of sins forgiven, deliverance from bondage, security unto eternal life—all those blessings.
But do we sufficiently recognize this: that it is a family that He has come to redeem, and that we are redeemed as a family? We may be redeemed individually, but God’s thought and Christ’s thought was this family—to redeem a family, a whole family. And God is after a family.
Now, have any of you friends here got a family? You parents, how happy and pleased would you be if every one of your children was a unit in himself or herself, living an independent life without any concern, consideration, or interest in any other member of the family—just so many isolated units in one place, which could not be called a home, though under one roof?
Would you be happy about that? If they all went off and never had much concern for the other members, just individuals? Well, they might be children of the same parents, but the parents would feel that the real meaning of parenthood had been lost, was not there, if that were the situation.
You can see through what I am saying how God must feel about anything and everything that is other than a family conception and a family spirit amongst His people.
We hear so much, and perhaps we have said and do say so much, about the church and the local assemblies and companies. We can get very tired of it; it can be so technical.
But certainly, what is God’s thought in companies of His people in any place? A representation of the family—the family where His fatherhood is the dominant thing, where His Son has the place that He ought to have, and where all are a unity, of one piece.
“Father, I pray that they may be one.” How? “As Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee.” As Father and Son, in fatherhood and sonship, are one: the Father revealing Himself in the Son, the Son manifesting the Father—that perfect oneness between those two—“that they may be, even as We are.”
The prayer of the Lord Jesus, right at the end as He went to the cross, was for a family. He was now going to the cross to redeem the family. Out of His death and resurrection, many sons should be born.
There are not lacking some indications that there was a very real answer to His prayer at the beginning. You would never call those twelve disciples, or apostles, a family before Calvary, would you? I should say, “Lord, deliver us from families if that is a family!” Quarrelling, envy, striving, contending with one another, and what not.
But look afterward: Peter standing up with the eleven, and that wonderful second chapter. They were together. They were all together in one place. They had all things in common. No one said that what he possessed was his own.
We reach something of the family when the Holy Spirit brings Christ into His place and God as Father over all.
Paul had some conception of this, and you know that in his letter to the Ephesians he says:
“The Father, from Whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.”
— Ephesians 3:15
Well, the Lord Jesus came, first, to secure unto the Father the satisfaction of His eternal desire, the realization of His own heart’s ambition. He came to redeem unto God a family.
And not to leave it there—not to leave it there—but to bring that family to reign in the eternal kingdom; to be the governmental family of the ages to come.
This is the means by which He is going to govern in the coming ages: this family elevated to His throne—an elevated family. Far greater, a more glorious counterpart of David and Solomon, is the Father, the Son, and then, to use another phrase from Hebrews, “many sons” whom He has brought to glory.
“Bringing many sons unto glory.”
We cannot just say these things without reminding ourselves that the realization of this, both on the part of the Lord Jesus and on our part, if the Father is to find His satisfaction, is a costly thing. It is by the way of travail. There is no family without travail.
It seems to be in the very constitution of this creation; God has put it there. Family is by way of travail, by way of suffering. It is costly.
In a word, someone has got to be prepared to lay down their life for the family. That is always involved in this. He did it.
Dear friends, we are not going to have anything like this amongst the Lord’s people unless we are prepared to suffer for it, to lay down our own lives for it, to set aside all our own personal interests for it, to really put up with a lot, that we might bring to the Father that upon which His heart is so much set.
It is a way of travail, a way of sacrifice, the way of suffering.
For this, His body was broken, that we might share that body as one body, one family. For this, His blood was shed: that, in drinking of His blood—in other words, of His poured-out life—we might share as a family that one life.
So we come back and close where we began: His prayer, His prayer. What a cry it is. What an appeal it is. Shall we say, what an agony it is?
“Father, the hour is come.” “O righteous Father, the world knew Thee not; but I knew Thee, and these knew that Thou didst send Me.” “Father, as Thou art in Me, and I in Thee, that they may be one.”
Have you been all the time poised: “Is the Lord saying something to me?” Somewhere, somehow, have I violated this family spirit, this family disposition? The spirit of God is the spirit of the family. Is there something He is saying to you, to me?
How does this apply to you? Is it just a lovely Bible thing? God forbid. Pray for it. Let us make it a prayer—a prayer that will have a very practical aspect.
For sometimes we can go a long way toward answering our own prayer. In this matter, it is not all to be left with the Lord. He has done His part. Shall we pray?
We do pray, O Lord, that this matchless name may be to us more precious from this time than it has been. May it have music in it, a beauty in it, but, O Lord, always a challenge in it, and a meaning to us of great preciousness.
We do thank Thee that, whereas they of old stood in awe and dread and fear of Thee, through Thy beloved Son we can draw near in full assurance of faith. We are bidden to come with boldness to the throne of grace, because now Thou hast been manifested to us in Him as Father.
Lord, lead us into the deeper fullnesses of all that is contained in that name. Set Thy seal upon our hour together this afternoon. May we have more than words and thought: a deep Holy Spirit registration in our hearts that shall correct us, shall guide us, shall influence all our relationships.
We ask in Thy dear Son’s name. Guard our hearts, our minds, our lips in this time between, so that we may come together again and, if Thou wilt, without the necessity of starting again, able to go right on.
We ask this for Jesus’ sake. Amen.